Advertisement
Published: July 12th 2008
Photo 1
me and my possum friend on our way home from swim practice. He always waits for us in the park :)Hi Everyone! Hope you are all doing well and enjoying summer! Winter life Down Under in Sydney is pretty rough 😉 haha, just kidding. Yesterday was apparently the coldest day of the year so far, it was about 40 degrees windy and rainy. If that’s as bad as it gets I think Aaron and I will survive. I thought I’d type up our basic weekly schedule so all of you back home have a better idea of what Aaron and I have been up to these past two weeks and will be in the weeks to come. Obviously this isn’t everything we do, but for the most part it’s a rough outline, so stayed tuned for the fun details………..
Monday:
8:45-12:45pm Biomechanics
7:00-8:00pm Swim @ Phillips Pool
Tuesday:
6:00-7:30am Bike @ Centennial Park
8:45-12:45pm Biomechanics
7:00-8:00pm Swim @ Phillips Pool
Wednesday:
9:30-12:30pm Australian Cultures class
7:00-8:30 pm Track workout
Thursday:
6:00-7:30am Bike @ Centennial Park
9:30-12:30pm Australian Cultures
5:00-6:00pm Private Swim Session
6:00-7:00pm Swim @ Phillips Pool
Friday:
6:30-8:00am run/strength
Swim: arranged
No Class Yay, reserved for “educational” field trips
Saturday:
6:00am Bike Run Brick @ Centennial Park
10:30am Ocean water swim @ Bondi Beach
Sunday:
Church @ Hillsong
No Scheduled training
On our first Sunday in Sydney Aaron and I and the other couple (Matt and Kristy) living with us went to Hillsong Church. For those of you who may not be familiar with Hillsong, they have a pretty cool website that’s worth checking out. They have churches all across the globe, in at least South Africa, Singapore, Russia and London. Anyways, I first came across Hillsong through their music. Their worship/praise bands have produced several CDs and their music is among my favorite for listening. I knew the band was based out of Australia, so when I found out one of the churches was actually right in Sydney I was pretty excited. It was a really great service and the music was awesome. Aaron and I went again this Sunday and a pastor from Louisiana gave the sermon and he was really funny. The message was powerful and centered on being extremely generous, which was the challenge he left us all with for the week. We both really enjoyed it. This whole past week has been the Hillsong Summer Conference which has been going
Photo 3
our first rugby game. NSW lost but it was still fun! on at the Acer Arena over in the Olympic Park. Every night at 4:30 and 7:30 they have what are called “Hillsong Nights” for those who can make it to the conferences during the day. Matt and Kristy were able to go Thursday night when Aaron and I had practice, but all four of us went Friday night for the closing ceremony right after we got back from our day field trip to the Blue Mountains (which I will get to in a moment), but for now, sticking with the conference……We got off the train at 7:45 and ran the rest of the way to the area hoping there would still be seats left. They didn’t even make us buy tickets, they just waved us in and we ended up getting pretty great seats up top just to the left of the stage with a good view. The rest of the night was awesome. That doesn’t really do it justice, but I’m not sure how else to describe it. The place was packed and filled with the Holy Spirit. The Hillsong band lead worship for a while and Joyce Meyer spoke for a bit, followed by lots more amazing worship.
There was also a lot of prayer and healing throughout the night and I believe God lifted Cancer off one of the speakers. We are hoping to find out more on that at church this Sunday. It really was a blessing to be there. Can’t wait for church on Sunday
I guess last week marked our first full week of classes and training. One thing’s for sure; we are never going to be bored! We are taking classes at the University of Notre Dame. It is a small Catholic University and is just about a 15 minute walk from where we are staying. Both of our professors are great. Dr. Ulibarri, our Biomechanics prof. is from MSU and Peter Dean is our Australian Cultures Professor from Sydney and has taught several short course Australian history classes to study abroad students so he really knows what he is doing. Like I mentioned before, we took an all day trip out to the Blue Mountains on Friday and it was really beautiful; FREEZING, but beautiful. First we went to the Featherdale Wildlife Park, which was about an hour bus ride away. We got to see all sorts of wild Australian
animals, koalas, kangaroos, dingoes, crocodiles, wombats, penguins and others. It was really fun and we were even allowed to pet a lot of them. Then we had about another hour bus ride up to a town just below the mountains where we watched an IMAX film called Wild Australia. Then we were off to a place called Echo Point to eat lunch. There we had a great view of these three rock formations/mountains known as the Three Sisters. It was really cool, but again, very cold. I did manage to snap a few good pictures though before my hands went completely numb. From there, we were off to the mountains where we went on a guided hike for about an hour and a half. Our guide’s name was Clide, and he was a pretty sweet, guy, and by sweet I mean he was a Hippie .
Our coaches are all really great too! Last Monday we sat down with Shaun, the head coach of STG Triathlon team, (the Triathlon Team we are training with while we are here). He talked with Aaron and I for about an hour, getting to know each of our backgrounds in triathlon, our strengths,
Photo 6
inside the opera house! weaknesses and about our goals for the program as well as some of our more long term goals. Between Aaron’s Olympic qualifying goal and my aspirations of learning to get out of my wetsuit, I think we made quite a good first impression Shaun also took us to get lights for our bikes that night since our ride the next morning and every other morning start off in the dark. Our swim coach’s name is Collin and he is quite a Guy. Basically, he’s just Awesome. He had the Australian backstroke record and held other national records in his younger days, but suffered a severe and career ending shoulder injury which prevented him from ever qualifying for the Olympics. He really is a neat guy though; definitely your stereotypical Australian; a real Bloke as Russ, our program director, described him. He has already helped me a ton with fixing my stroke. I believe the exact words he used when describing my swim stroke during some of the drills were “a bloody mess” haha, hopefully that will all change with a bit more time. Aaron and I met with him privately this past Thursday before our regularly scheduled swim workout
Photo 7
chicken car?? and he took us through a few Total Immersion drills. Aaron was already a bit familiar with this type of training, but it was all new for me, and I felt pretty funny doing some of the drills but they seemed to help a lot. Collin also told Aaron that there is no reason he shouldn’t be swimming 16/low 17 minute 1.5K! Which incase you were wondering is a pretty incredible time, so that was really great news for Aaron. Collin also wants Aaron to try to break the STG 1000K time trial record which he (Collin) currently holds
Biking has been a bit more challenging as far as the temperature at the time of our practices goes, but aside from it being completely dark and borderline freezing when we start practice, the park that we get to ride in and the sunrises we get to watch pretty much blow everything else out of the water! The Park we ride in is called Centennial Park and it’s just at the edge of the city. It’s only about a 10-15 minute bike ride from the World Tower, but the first time Aaron and I rode out there in the dark
Photo 8
oooh the aroma fest!! The streets were lined with coffee and CHOCOLATE venders....luckily Aaron was there to keep me under control it took us a bit longer to find the group once we were in the park. The park is huge and full of lakes and fields and running paths and even in the early winter hours it’s filled with lots of cycle and running groups, roller bladders and people doing yoga. It’s really pretty awesome to see so many people out just as the sun is rising. The loop that we ride around in the park is about 3k, and each practice we’re usually scheduled to ride about 40K, but since Aaron and I have class at 8:45 we haven’t been able to stay for all of it yet.
Ok, well that's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure I'm forgetting a number of things. Aaron will be following up shortly with his recap of our trip to the opera house 😊 I Hope everyone is enjoying a warm summer back in the States. I love and miss you all.
Lindsey
Advertisement
Tot: 0.174s; Tpl: 0.025s; cc: 10; qc: 51; dbt: 0.1275s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
